Nancey Murphy's Nonreductive Physicalism

This essay examines Nancey Murphy's commitment to downward causation and develops a critique of that notion based upon the distinction between the causal relevance of a higher-level event and its causal efficacy. I suggest the following: (1) nonreductive physicalism lacks adequate resources upon which to base an assertion of real causal power at the emergent, supervenient level; (2) supervenience's nonreductive nature ought not obscure the fact that it affirms an ontological determination of higher-level properties by those at the lower level; and (3) the notion of divine self-renunciation, while consonant with Murphy's claim of supervenient, divine action, is nonetheless problematic. Throughout, I claim that the question of the causal efficacy of a level is logically independent from the assertion of its conceptual or nomological nonreducibility.     

Divine Compositionalism: A Form of Occasionalism or a Preferable Alternative View of Divine Action?

Abstract

This paper recommends divine compositionalism, a distinct view of divine creative action, as God's compositional, existence-conferring efficient causation according to his will or plan. It addresses the question of whether divine compositionalism is a species of occasionalism, treating occasional causation as a manifesting disposition which is analyzed in terms of God's creative action. We describe how divine compositionalism accounts for fundamental concepts in science including dispositions, causation, event, law of nature, and mechanism. We conclude that divine compositionalism is a more comprehensive view of divine creative action than concurrentism, and is distinct from extant views of occasionalism.     

Emergent Causation

Downward causation is commonly held to create problems for ontologically emergent properties. In this paper I describe two novel examples of ontologically emergent properties and show how they avoid two main problems of downward causation, the causal exclusion problem and the causal closure problem. One example involves an object whose colour does not logically supervene on the colours of its atomic parts. The other example is inspired by quantum entanglement cases but avoids controversies regarding quantum mechanics. These examples show that the causal exclusion problem can be avoided, in one case by showing how it is possible to interact with an object without interacting with its atomic parts. I accept that emergence cannot be reconciled with causal closure, but argue that violations of causal closure do not entail violations of the base-level laws. Only the latter would conflict with empirical science.     

THE FALSE PROMISE OF QUANTUM MECHANICS

The causal indeterminacy suggested by quantum mechanics has led to its being the centerpiece of several proposals for divine action that does not contradict natural laws. However, even if the theoretical concerns about the reality of causal indeterminacy are ignored, quantum‐level divine action fails to resolve the problem of ongoing, responsive divine activity. This is because most quantum‐level actions require a significant period of time in order to reach macroscopic levels whether via chaotic amplification or complete divine control of quantum events. Therefore, quantum‐level divine action either requires divine foreknowledge of purportedly free or random events or imposes such limitations on divine actions that they become late, potentially impotent, and confused. I argue that the theological problem of divine action remains; even at its most promising, quantum mechanics offers insufficient resolution. This failure suggests a reexamination of the assumptions that God is temporal and lacks foreknowledge of future contingencies.     

Absence Causation and a Liberal Theory of Causal Explanation

For the framework of event causation—i.e. the framework according to which causation is a relation between events—absences or omissions pose a problem. Absences, it is generally agreed, are not events; so, under the framework of event causation, they cannot be causally related. But, as a matter of fact, absences are often taken to be causes or effects. The problem of absence causation is thus how to make sense of causation that apparently involves absences as causes or effects. In an influential paper, Helen Beebee offers a partial solution to the problem by giving an account of causation by absence (i.e. causation in which absences are supposed to be causes). I argue that Beebee's account can be extended to cover causation of absence (i.e. causation in which absences are supposed to be effects) as well. More importantly, I argue that the extended Beebeeian account calls for a major modification to David Lewis's theory of causal explanation, usually taken as standard. Compared to the standard theory, the result of this modification, which I shall call ‘the liberal theory of causal explanation’, has, among other things, the advantage of being able to accommodate causal explanations in which the explananda are not given in terms of events.     

THE DIVINE SPIRIT AS CAUSAL AND PERSONAL

Theists in general and Christians in particular have good grounds for affirming divine action in relation to twenty‐first‐century science. Although humans cannot perceive with their five senses the causation—both divine and creaturely—at work in our world, they have reasons to believe God acts as an efficient, but never sufficient, cause in creation. The essential kenosis option I offer overcomes liabilities in other kenosis proposals, while accounting for a God who acts personally, consistently, persuasively, and yet in diversely efficacious ways. We can reasonably infer that the love, beauty, and truth expressed in creation derive from divine and creaturely causation.     

DIVINE ACTION: IS IT CREDIBLE?

Abstract. The concept of God's acting in the world has been seen to be problematic in light of the claims of scientific knowledge that the regularity of a law like universe rules out divine action. There are resources in both scientific knowledge and religion that can render meaningful and credible divine action. The new physics, chaos theory, cognitive psychology, and the concept of top-down causation are used to understand how God acts in the world. God's action is not an intervention, but is understood on the model of how the mind influences the brain in a downward causative manner. Suggestions for imagining God's actions are discussed.     

The Causality Distinction,Kenosis, and a Middle Way: Aquinas and Polkinghorne on Divine Action

This article evaluates and considers two important philosophical contributions to the discussion considering divine action in the work of Thomas Aquinas and John Polkinghorne. Aquinas argues that God employs both primary and secondary causality, in that God causes some events directly by divine power and others by means of secondary causes. Polkinghorne argues that this approach makes God the author of evil and opts instead for a “kenotic approach” to divine action, wherein God chooses to “empty” God's self of complete divine control. We think that these views can complement each other and need not represent mutually exclusive alternatives.     

EMERGENCE AND HUMAN UNIQUENESS: LIMITING OR DELIMITING EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATION?

Abstract. Philip Clayton's book Mind and Emergence presents a highly sophisticated argument against any kind of uncritical theology that might want to follow science into a world of overly narrow, compartmentalized disciplines that do not sufficiently communicate between themselves. Clayton argues persuasively that the basic structure of the phenomenal world is multileveled, with emergent properties and degrees of freedom that cannot be adequately described, predicted, or explained in terms of lower‐level phenomena only. Moreover, the various levels of organization are linked to one another by interfaces of mutual constraint in terms of upward and downward causation. The most valuable part of Clayton's argument, however, is that in a philosophy of emergence one must also, if not especially, account for the role of the biological sciences and especially for the influence of human thoughts and skills, human choices and actions, and—one of the most important causes of all—human purposes. Clayton's biggest challenge is that the level of human personhood offers us the only appropriate level to introduce the question of God and the possibility of divine agency. I critically evaluate this central claim and its implications not only for the extent of divine influence on the world but also for the scope and limitations of the interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and the sciences.     

What is “Intervention”?

I begin by noting that several theologians and others object to special divine action (divine intervention and action beyond conservation and creation) on the grounds that it is incompatible with science. These theologians are thinking of classical Newtonian science; I argue that in fact classical science is in no way incompatible with special divine action, including miracle. What is incompatible with special divine action is the Laplacean picture, which involves the causal closure of the universe. I then note that contemporary, quantum mechanical science doesn't even initially appear to be incompatible with special divine action. Nevertheless, many who are well aware of the quantum mechanical revolution (including some members of the Special Divine Action Project) still find a problem with special divine action, hoping to find an understanding of it that doesn't involve divine intervention. I argue that their objections to intervention are not sound. Furthermore, it isn't even possible to say what intervention is, given the quantum mechanical framework. I conclude by offering an account of special divine action that isn't open to their objections to intervention.     

Degree of explanation

Partial explanations are everywhere. That is, explanations citing causes that explain some but not all of an effect are ubiquitous across science, and these in turn rely on the notion of degree of explanation. I argue that current accounts are seriously deficient. In particular, they do not incorporate adequately the way in which a cause’s explanatory importance varies with choice of explanandum. Using influential recent contrastive theories, I develop quantitative definitions that remedy this lacuna, and relate it to existing measures of degree of causation. Among other things, this reveals the precise role here of chance, as well as bearing on the relation between causal explanation and causation itself.     

Can Western Monotheism Avoid Substance Dualism?

The problem of divine agency and action is analogous to the problem of human agency and action: How is such agency possible in the absence of a dualistic causal interaction between disparate orders of being? This paper explores nondualistic accounts of divine agency that assert the following: (1) physical monism, (2) antireductionism, (3) physical realization, and (4) divine causal realism. I conclude that a robustly causal deity is incompatible with nonddualism's affirmation of physical monism. Specifically, I argue the incoherence of nondualistic strategies that advocate divine information transfer without energy transfer or the divine downward causation of physical events. Furthermore, I claim that the principle of explanatory exclusion makes any nondualistic, noninterventionist account of divine agency highly dubious. Finally, I suggest that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam can avoid a causally inert deity only if they are willing to deny the current presumption of the causal closure of the physical.     

THE DOCTRINE OF CREATION AND MODERN SCIENCE

Abstract. In contrast to Christian theology that has ignored science, this essay suggests that a credible doctrine of God as creator must take into account scientific understandings of the world. The introduction of the principle of inertia into seventeenth-century science and philosophy helped change the traditional idea of God as creator (which included divine conservation and governance) into a deist concept of God. To recapture the idea that God continually creates, it is important to affirm the contingency of the world as a whole and of all events in the world. Reflecting on the interrelationship of contingency and natural law provides a framework for relating scientific theories of a universal field, the concept of emergent evolution, and the theological concept of eternal divine spirit active in all creation.     

The Emergence and Irreducibility of Scientific Knowledge： A Multi-Synergic-Holism

The world possesses a hierarchical structure and evolves through emergence. Its levels are the result of emergence, and possess unique properties and functions which their components and emergent bases do not. Each of these levels also possesses basic laws or rules which cannot be logically deduced from other levels, and evince downward causation. Therefore, there are non-linear causal networks among the levels of complex systems in which causal reductionism does not hold. The hierarchical structure is formed in accordance with the increasing organized complexity of the objects, so that different levels give birth to different disciplines, and different disciplines have their own theoretical autonomy and independence. Therefore, theories across different levels are essentially irreducible, and any apparent case of reduction may only be so in the sense of a partial reduction. Emergence-evolution-hierarchy ontology and multi-synergic holism is compatible with reductionism even as it transcends it.     

Folk psychology as science

There is a long-standing debate in the philosophy of action and the philosophy of science over folk psychological explanations of human action: do the (perhaps implicit) generalizations that underwrite such explanations purport to state contingent, empirically established connections between beliefs, desires, and actions, or do such generalizations serve rather to define, at least in part, what it is to have a belief or desire, or perform an action? This question has proven important because of certain traditional assumptions made about the role of law-statements in scientific explanations. According to this tradition, law-statements take the form of generalizations, and the laws we find in well-established sciences are contingent and empirical; as such, if the kinds of generalizations at work in folk psychological explanations of human action act like definitions, or state conceptual connections, then such generalizations could not play the kind of explanatory role we find in mature sciences. This paper argues that the aforementioned way of framing the debate reflects a still powerful but impoverished conception of the role laws play in scientific explanations, a conception that, moreover, cannot be reconciled with a good deal of actual scientific practice. When we update the philosophy of science, we find the concerns that are raised for folk psychological explanations largely evaporate or are found not to be specific to such explanations.     

DANCING AROUND THE CAUSAL JOINT: CHALLENGING THE THEOLOGICAL TURN IN DIVINE ACTION THEORIES

Recent years have seen a shift in divine action debates. Turning from noninterventionist, incompatibilist causal joint models, representatives of a “theological turn” in divine action have questioned the metaphysical assumptions of approaches seeking indeterministic aspects of nature wherein God might act. Various versions of theistic naturalism (such as Thomism, panentheistic naturalism, and pneumatological naturalism) offer specific theological frameworks that reimagine the basic God–world relationship. But do these explicitly theological approaches to divine action take scientific knowledge and methodology seriously enough? And do such approaches adequately address the problem of how uncreated, immaterial realities could affect physical, material processes? This article examines various features of the theological turn in divine action—recognizing it as a welcome step in science and religion, while challenging its current adequacy.     

Divine Action in the World of Physics: Response to Nicholas Saunders

Nicholas Saunders claims that, in my view, divine action requires and is confined to indeterminacies at the quantum level. I try to make clear that, in speaking of "gaps" in physical causality, I mean that the existence of intentions entails that determining law explanations alone cannot give a complete account of the natural world. By "indeterminacy" I mean a general (not quantum) lack of determining causality in the physical order. Construing physical causality in terms of dispositional properties variously realized in more or less creative ways in different contexts may be most helpful in developing an account of divine action.     

THE METAPHYSICS OF DOWNWARD CAUSATION: REDISCOVERING THE FORMAL CAUSE

The methodological nonreductionism of contemporary biology opens an interesting discussion on the level of ontology and the philosophy of nature. The theory of emergence (EM), and downward causation (DC) in particular, bring a new set of arguments challenging not only methodological, but also ontological and causal reductionism. This argumentation provides a crucial philosophical foundation for the science/theology dialogue. However, a closer examination shows that proponents of EM do not present a unified and consistent definition of DC. Moreover, they find it difficult to prove that higher‐order properties can be causally significant without violating the causal laws that operate at lower physical levels. They also face the problem of circularity and incoherence in their explanation. In our article we show that these problems can be overcome only if DC is understood in terms of formal rather than physical (efficient) causality. This breakdown of causal monism in science opens a way to the retrieval of the fourfold Aristotelian notion of causality.